So, Who’s On the Hook for all that Food that Welfare Users Stole in Louisiana?

If you guessed “the taxpayers,” for once, that was not the correct answer.

The Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services, which oversees the state’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP, said Walmart will have to foot the bill for store losses in Springhill and Mansfield, La., during a food shopping frenzy.

When the EBT system went down, stores had the choice to let people use them anyway, or stop them from being used while the glitch was sorted out. Most stores chose the latter. For whatever reason, these Walmarts chose the former. So it’s on them. The state is able to track the cards via GPS and can provide the “who bought what” information to Walmart, so it’ll ultimately be up to the stores to decide what to do.

They should probably start by firing the managers who allowed the theft to go on. Surely welfare users weren’t the only customers in the stores when the glitch went down. Those managers basically encouraged theft and made a mess of things for their self-reliant customers.

Bryan Preston has been a leading conservative blogger and opinionator since founding his first blog in 2001. Bryan is a military veteran, worked for NASA, was a founding blogger and producer at Hot Air, was producer of the Laura Ingraham Show and, most recently before joining PJM, was Communications Director of the Republican Party of Texas.

Why don't we call it theft when CEOs negotiate a salary 320x the median wage of workers, LIBOR manipulation rapes cities, and the guy checking that those picking the bones of Detroit don't overcharge gets $600 per hour?

"Surely welfare users weren’t the only customers in the stores when the glitch went down."

Well, probably not, Bryan, but it was only those on welfare through the SNAP that were using EBT cards that couldn't be validated as far as the spending limit was concerned. You can bet that Walmart was still validating limits on any personal credit cards being used. So how was it the manager's fault?

The managers were put in the position of denying those on welfare the ability to purchase food (which, as someone pointed out, would have resulted in negative press for Walmart), or allowing them to continue to purchase food with EBT cards of unknown validity, hoping they were basically honest. That's a tough decision to make on the spur of the moment.

Walmart execs made a hard decision. On one hand, no one wants to see a headline like "Wal-Mart Denies Food to Starving Poor," which you KNOW would run everywhere, for liberals hate Wal-Mart. On the other, trust that food stamp recipients would be basically honest people who wouldn't intentionally scam the system that is trying to help them.